The Breeders: Tiny Desk Concert

The Breeders perform a Tiny Desk Concert on March 7, 2018 (Eslah Attar/NPR).

Eslah Attar
/ NPR

Originally published on April 17, 2018 10:24 am

After many iterations, hiatuses and returns, The Breeders will always be Kim Deal's band, with her sister Kelley at her side. They return this year to an old lineup, with all the promise (and old wounds) it brings. But you can see a renewed love and goofiness throughout this set — using a roadie as a crash cymbal, or Kim Deal's faux-exasperation at Josephine Wiggs for starting a wind-up toy just before a song.

The same group behind the band's breakout, 1993 Last Splash — a sugar-smacked, alt-pop album that sounded like nothing else in the underground pushed to rock radio — just released All Nerve in March. Now bassist Wiggs and drummer Jim Macpherson join Kim and Kelley Deal for this Tiny Desk Concert.

"Somehow, between the four of us getting in the basement [and] playing together again, it all just felt exactly the same as the good times before everything," Kelley Deal told NPR. "It was just really fun."

The new songs don't have the same punch as Last Splash; rather, they are wiser, more frazzled and, with a generous mix of crunch and dreamy scuzz, explore themes of encroaching isolation and dissatisfaction. The Breeders play two songs from All Nerve — the lysergic "MetaGoth" and the gorgeously strange and sweet title track — plus "Off You" from 2002's Title TK, an excellent album worth revisiting if you haven't listened in a while. It's a reminder that, while you can hear the raw charm of The Breeders in younger bands, no one still quite sounds like them.